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Topic: Possessed Hardware? (Read 2209 times)

Today I came downstairs to my office and heard an odd "thrumm thrumm thrumm" noise eminating from the corner of the room where the paper shredder lives.

Seems the durn thing had started spontaneously during the night and had been running unattended for hours and hours. There was a thin cloud of blue smoke in the room, with the definite tang of burning metal. The case was too hot to touch, so I yanked the cord.

After checking its paper bin for body parts and blood, I plugged it in again and... it's dead, jim. Maybe the thermal sensor finally triggered and it's gotta cool down for awhile, or maybe it's really and truly toasted.

I blame Satan.

Here's another one: a few years back, a friend who moved here from a cold weather climate woke up one morning to the sound of his car running outside his apartment. Rushing out to thwart a carjacking, he discovered that the car was indeed happily idling... but there was nobody about, and all the doors were locked.

His theory: sometime during the night his cat had jumped on his key fob, initiating the car's remote starting feature. There's no telling how long the car had been sitting there, patiently running, awaiting its owner. He didn't remember how much gas he had when he parked it, so his worst case estimate was it'd been running most of the night.

Theoretically the remote start shouldn't have worked, since for safety, it requires the user hold the button down for many seconds. And cats don't have opposable thumbs.

Ralf, what happens if you now feed shredded paper into the shredder (no need to plug it in, Satan doesn't need the national grid) - do excerpts of Aleister Crowley's writings and covers of Black Sabbath albums come out the other end?